This post by Seculert Research Labs provides an overview of the evolution of Carberp. Carberp is a relatively new botnet which is rapidly evolving into the one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever seen.

Some say it will be the successor to Zeus. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but its developers are surely competing for the cybercriminals’ software budget.

The lesson is that shutting down a botnet by purely technical means doesn’t do anything in the long term; arresting the people responsible is key to fixing the cybercrime threat.

What does this mean to the enterprise? You are on your own. Given the ease with which new botnets can be created and their geographic distribution, the arrests will be interesting but will not significantly reduce the botnet threat.

Cymbel provides three complementary solutions which help you mitigate the risks of botnets: